Jackson Magas

UWRT 1103-009,013,014

14 November 2019

Writing Theory Draft

I will be discussing the five SLOs (Student Learning Outcomes) in this document. These

outcomes include: rhetorical knowledge, critical reading, knowledge of conventions, composing

processes, and critical reflection. First I will define each of these SLOs and then I will give

examples from my writing throughout the course in order to provide good and bad ways I used

each outcome and explain how they were or were not effective.

1. Rhetorical Knowledge-

A commanding writer uses rhetorical knowledge in order to effectively persuade the

audience to take their side. This includes the writer utilizing key aspects of their environment

including, their understanding of the rhetorical situation, the genre they’re writing in, the purpose

they are writing for, and the demographics and interests of the audience. If the writer has a great

understanding and implementation of these key aspects of rhetoric, then they will likely be able

to wue the audience successfully. This SLO is particularly important as it fills the content and

stance of your argument and without that you’d have no way of convincing your audience to take

your side. Good rhetoric can be used in all writing but it is used very differently depending on

the context of your piece, this makes it all the more important that the writer understands the

context and knows how to best deal with it.

 My first example is from my thesis paper. My topic was about the troubles of computer

science students starting to seek jobs out of college. Here I kept the needs of my audience in

mind as I provided context for my topic. This inclusion of background information is effective as

it allows the audience to understand my claims since they now know how the issue arose, from

the high expectations of employers towards applicants for computer science jobs. My second

example is from my podcast storyboard. Here I utilized the rhetorical situation of the podcast

being for UNCC students, causing me to make the decision to include interviews of fellow

UNCC students. This will make the audience more engaged as the familiarity will cause the issue

to hit closer to home.

2. Critical Reading-

An articulate writer uses critical reading in order to gain insight and perspective on the

topic they’re researching. This helps a lot to then use the information you gather in your own

writing of the topic. Once you have a good enough knowledge base and you have introduced the

topic, you can then either support or criticize what you have read, in order to tailor the

information for your argument. This step is crucial as you must read before you write or else

you’d simply just be making up nonsense and false claims due to a lack of understanding and

proper research on your topic.

 My first example is from an entry in my research summaries where I read an article and

then wrote an analysis on it. The information in this analysis was all paraphrased from the article

in order to only include the most important information for ease of use later. The second example

is from the Re: Composing #4 Wertz-Orbaugh discussion where I read an entry in the UWRT

journal and then detailed how I felt about it and explained what the entry was saying.

3. Knowledge of Conventions-
 An articulate writer uses their knowledge of conventions to appropriately portray their

information based on the given context of the writing. This includes the use of proper citations,

grammar, usage, and spelling. Without these basic fundamentals the audience would never be

able to take you seriously and would write you off as having low credibility and a lack of

necessary skills.

This first example is from my inquiry synthesis paper that was written in MLA format.

For MLA you must organize the contents of your paper as shown above. This includes

formatting your paper as double spaced in Times New Roman font and having your name,

professor, date, and class all at the top left as such. This displays my ability to properly start

writing an MLA formatted paper.

 The second example is from my inquiry proposal. Here I listed off a few keywords to use

when researching my topic. I correctly used quotes here by including them in a sentence with an

introduction rather than just throwing them in without context. This displays my ability to

manipulate my text in order to appeal to quoted information.

My third example is from my thesis paper. Here I show how to properly use in-text

citations. I included it right after my quote in parentheses with the paragraph number after the

authors’ names. On top of this I included a period after the parentheses in order to close the

sentence properly.

4. Composing Processes-

An articulate writer uses composing processes by taking multiple steps towards

completing a paper. These steps include everything from planning out your paper with an

outline, writing the draft, peer-reviewing, writing the final draft, and then revising. These steps

are vital to producing a quality paper as without going through all of them you may miss

grammatical errors, wordy sentences, and many more possible problems.

 In these three examples I went back through the version history of my thesis paper and

found two versions that I heavily modified. My first example is from October 27th where I

changed the in-text citations to make them simpler as I saw this being used on someone else’s

thesis and thought it was a good idea. The second example shows my version on November 1st

where I corrected my in-text citations and added context to my quoted authors in order to argue

their credibility. My last example is from my first paragraph on November 1st where I reworded

a chunk of the paragraph and added information to give it more context and meaning. I also

changed the date since I was starting to finalize the paper. These examples all show every little

detail I changed throughout the development of my thesis paper and most of them were changed

due to feedback from peer review.

5. Critical Reflection-

A good writer uses critical reflection in order to look back on their work in order to

analyze what they did right and wrong. This process will help the writer when taking on their

next paper as they will have a better idea of how to write due to analysis of prior experience.

This is a key step for every proficient writer as they know that coming to terms with what you’re
good and bad at will tell you what you need to work on to become a better writer and what to

keep doing. This paper is a great example of critical reflection as I am going back through my

previous work and finding what I was good at. This allows me to gage where I am at in my

progress towards becoming a great writer.

My first example is from the “They Say, I Say” discussion where I reacted to the reading.

My reaction displays a great example of me reflecting over how I felt about the reading and what

I liked about it. By doing this I was able to find ways to implement their advice into my own

writing. My second example is from another entry in my research summaries. Here I reflected on

how I liked the article and what it discussed. I was then able to decide how I’d use the

information for myself in my thesis.